Me too. But he's right on this one. I'm a long-time Rumsfeld supporter, but have finally come to this same conclusion. He ran the war like a CEO runs a drug company.
...and Dubya ran it like the owner of the Texas Rangers runs a baseball team.
Of course you are ignoring what a reduced military and a mess Clinton left behind.
Rumsfeld had to work with what he had. He and our wonderful troops came through with flying colors.
The reason we didn't have more troops and equipment available was because Clinton cut it in half, literally.
But Bush and Rumsfeld didn't want to waste time with counterproductive finger pointing, they worked out a strategy which clearly was a winning one -- just look how fast we won in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The insurgency is a different problem that is hard to fight with the military, because of its asymmetric warfare nature.
I also agree on this point. It's too bad it took the president so long to figure it out.
Bullshit
We got the job done quickly with a minimum of GI fodder and casualties. But nothing but criticism, for our troops and their leaders from the Democrats, of which McCain is one.
The war in Iraq is over, what's needed now is a strategy to annihilate the militias. We have to do to the Clerics what we did to Suddam. New ball game, new people. Rummy did his stint well.
Thank you Rummy.
You are 100% right. And that approach was disastrous. We needed the generals to run this war, with a level of brutality matched only by WWII. Instead we got Rumsfeld, with his noble vision of a smaller, more efficient fighting force--at the worst possible time for it. And the almost insane obsession with limiting civilian casualties hamstrung our soldiers from the very beginning. Great CEO, lousy SecDef.
You've no idea what "running a war" is like.